New patches for CMBN:MG and CMFI

[Elvis]

CMBN:MG Patch 2.11 list of changes:

* Generally improved graphics, including FPS and quality improvements, and better support for faster video cards
* Bridge navigation problems corrected
* ATG issues when setting up near walls and bocage corrected
* AA guns can no longer incorrectly limber near walls and bocage
* Passenger vulnerability in soft skinned vehicles increased
* German halftrack gunners lowered to a more accurate protective stance
* Some urban roofs that incorrectly blocked LOS/LOF no longer do
* Vehicles using Pause do not have accuracy reduced as if they are still moving
* King Tiger ammo counts lowered to probable correct amounts of 64 for Porsche type and 70 for Henschel
* Marder II based formation added to Quick Battles (Luftwaffe only)
* Jagdpanzer IV/70 now has ammo for it's machinegun
* Sherman M4A3(75)W (Rhino) now shows the cutter attachment
* PIAT max range reduced to 180m
* "Ditch Contours" feature
* US Airborne uniform options for Holland corrected
* Missing German Airborne and Navy unit portraits now included
* Various minor bug fixes

CMFI Patch 1.11 list of changes:


Generally improved graphics, including FPS and quality improvements, and better support for faster video cards
Bridge navigation problems corrected
ATG issues when setting up near walls and bocage corrected
AA guns can no longer incorrectly limber near walls and bocage
Passenger vulnerability in soft skinned vehicles increased
German halftrack gunners lowered to a more accurate protective stance
Vehicles using Pause do not have accuracy reduced as if they are still moving
PIAT max range reduced to 180m
"Ditch Contours" feature
TO&E changes:
Italian HMG ammo bearers now carry HMG ammunition again.
British Infantry Branch now has a Forward Observer Section available for purchase in Quick Battles.
Polish now have Stuart (Recce) available in recce platoons for armoured regiments.
Polish Sherman variants availability adjusted: Sherman I removed, Sherman III (early) added. Note that this change will not affect existing scenarios.
Canadian Sherman variants availability adjusted: only the Sherman V is available to armoured regiments, while the Sherman II exclusively equips the armoured recce regiments. Note that this change will not affect existing scenarios.
Canadians Mech Infantry branch option for Quick Battles is no longer available before February 1944.
Various minor bug fixes

 

[Redwolf]

Nice list.

I just wish Steve would pick up a bit more what Charles is going to fix and let people know earlier. The halftrack gunner issue was quite the mega-thread.

 

[slm]

I'm interested in seeing how Jeeps are in 2.11.
In 2.10 they seemed very well protected against rifle caliber hits.
The vehicle did not get damage easily and passengers did not get wounded.

 

[Redwolf]

I'm very happy that battlefront is now providing the patches on a non-nonsense simple link download. Previously we had to deal with those crapware sites, and truncated patches that IIRC never got corrected.

 

[Fleischer]

I'm very happy that battlefront is now providing the patches on a non-nonsense simple link download. Previously we had to deal with those crapware sites, and truncated patches that IIRC never got corrected.

Performance issues adressed also...maybe they do listen to the mental cranks after all?

 

[Rule_303]

Some good insights from Steve here on "under the hood" stuff.

Yup We did some major reengineering to improve both FPS and draw distances. It can also have a positive effect on Model Quality and Shadows. It all depends on your particular system and what scenario you're looking at.

While the improvements are somewhat dependent upon scenario composition, old or new are treated the same way. Try bumping up your quality settings. The settings still have an effect on the top end quality.

The actual performances increases in FPS and draw distance are definitely heavily system dependent and specific to what is in a scenario. But everybody should notice some degree of significant improvements in both areas overall. Some people will see massive differences. We had testers that literally doubled their framerates at times. 20% is probably more the average level of improvement.

*****
I don't know what is causing the draw distance in one scenario to be better than another for you. The improvements are dependent on a bunch of different factors inherent in the scenario itself, your video card, and the settings. Not dependent on when the scenario was made. Reason is that the improvements are based on the artwork and the artwork is in the game and not the scenario.
....
Yeah, part of the optimization was putting more load on "pre processing" end of things instead of "on the fly". Therefore, scenarios that have a ton of the stuff that's been newly optimized will load slower than before, but then run a ton faster when playing.

In a VERY rough way you can think of it this way... the more the increase in load time, the bigger the increase in performance. I don't know how directly proportional they are, but one is definitely an indicator of the other.
....
The optimizations can not make your system run faster than it's top end physical limitations. But what it can do is keep your system running much slower than it otherwise can. In game terms this probably means only marginal improvement over your best prior experiences, but major improvements over the situations that used to cause you to tear your hair out.
****
A bit of trivia about some of the speed improvements. When Charles originally coded the game's graphical core (mostly in 2005/2006) video cards of the day processed certain elements using a specific methodology. Always the clever fellow, Charles coded things to take the best advantage of the options that were available to him at the time. Fast forward a few years and the cards started favoring a different methodology. The old system still is supported, but the cards and drivers started optimizing for the new way. That means the old way didn't work as efficiently as it once did.

Understandably we were tied up making new game features and new game content. Things that "worked" were not looked at because we wanted to keep moving forward. A few years passed and we started noticing that high end video cards were not performing as expected. But it varied wildly from card to card, driver version to driver version, system to system. Then came Phil.

As our First Second Programmer, Phil allowed us to go back and revisit some past things while Charles (and Phil) still keep the game moving forward. Phil had optimized and improved a number of things already, and we liked what we saw. So we decided it was time to figure out what was going wrong with the higher end cards.

Phil pretty quickly identified a number of places that were tripping the game up. But the fixes were pretty dramatic from a code standpoint. We were very far along with Market Garden and didn't want to throw testing into a potential tailspin. It's the sort of thing that could have caused weeks of delay. So he worked on the code separately.

As soon as Market Garden was out the code was integrated and handed to testers along with the patches you now have. Surprisingly few rough edges needed smoothing! And that's why you have it now instead of later

One of the odd downsides of having a long lived game engine is running into major long term technology changes. For most games the technology shifts slower than the game dies, therefore they don't have to worry about things because it's in the discount bin by the time it matters. The games you see in versions 3, 4, 5, etc. are pretty much built on new game engines each release because they have the money to do it. But for CMx2, it's been in continual production and use for 8 years. In the world of games that's a very, very long time.

I never went to version 2.0, or to Italy or MG, so can someone please tell me whether the patch draw distance fixes are meaningful? Before / After screenies (retake an old screenie?) would be ideal. Thanks in advance.

 

[Redwolf]

Some good insights from Steve here on "under the hood" stuff.



I never went to version 2.0, or to Italy or MG, so can someone please tell me whether the patch draw distance fixes are meaningful? Before / After screenies (retake an old screenie?) would be ideal. Thanks in advance.

I dunno yet. I would have fired 2.11 up yesterday if I knew there's new pretty to oogle at.

I wish that description wasn't so technically fuzzy. Charles seems to be a bit heavy on try-n-error sometimes and needlessly locks in thing to whatever is hardware RIGHT NOW (also in CMx1), but it's good to see that Phil could be put to good use.

 

[Elvis]

Some good insights from Steve here on "under the hood" stuff.



I never went to version 2.0, or to Italy or MG, so can someone please tell me whether the patch draw distance fixes are meaningful? Before / After screenies (retake an old screenie?) would be ideal. Thanks in advance.

Here's a review from me you might not expect...... my computer time for gaming has been so then the last few weeks I haven't even had time to download the last half dozen builds so I haven't even seen what he's talking about!!! . Maybe I should go do that now though.

 

[Redwolf]

The new patch also fixes a stupidity they previously had in patches. It now simply defaults to update all the modules and the base game you have. It doesn't make sense not to since the not updated stuff will simply not work (you push the executable either way and miss the pak files). Not only did they offer the choice before, both CMBN and BF defaulted to "not update". Anyway, so now it just updates stuff.

 

[Redwolf]

I dunno yet. I would have fired 2.11 up yesterday if I knew there's new pretty to oogle at.

Unless I'm having selective memory it looks much better and is smoother to pan around. LGTM.

ETA: however, I have blinky objects.

 

[NUTTERNAME]

Here's a review from me you might not expect...... my computer time for gaming has been so then the last few weeks I haven't even had time to download the last half dozen builds so I haven't even seen what he's talking about!!! . Maybe I should go do that now though.

Yes! Do that to NOW though! Because you computer time for gaming has been so! (Then the last few weeks). YES!!!!

 

[Fleischer]

I can't say I notice too much of a difference in fps(playing on improved & balanced). It still goes all over the place - from 15-50 depending on situation. Average might be a bit higher. As a comparison, I can play the clunker(known and scorned for its horrible performance) 'Rome II:TW' with most settings on high with an fps that rarely drops below 55.

Wasn't the officical explanation for the low fps that there were "so many calculations that low-brow games never do"?

 

[Elvis]

Yes! Do that to NOW though! Because you computer time for gaming has been so! (Then the last few weeks). YES!!!!

Hee hee.... I should always proofread....especially when typing on my dead sexy phone.

 

[Redwolf]

I can't say I notice too much of a difference in fps(playing on improved & balanced). It still goes all over the place - from 15-50 depending on situation. Average might be a bit higher. As a comparison, I can play the clunker(known and scorned for its horrible performance) 'Rome II:TW' with most settings on high with an fps that rarely drops below 55.

Wasn't the officical explanation for the low fps that there were "so many calculations that low-brow games never do"?

The way Steve put it they had put a lot of calculations interleaves with graphics operations, when the graphics card would be busy anyway, except that high end cards were not (having already blasted through their part) and were hanging out idle, and that they now moved those calculations which which enable faster graphics cards to actually pan faster. I think it works for me but I'm too lazy to fire up the old version for a direct compare.

How do you measure fps, Fleischer? Still only fraps, no built-in display?

 

[Fleischer]

Yes, Fraps only.

Steve's explanation does not make any sense to me, because the low fps is unaffected by the state of the game. It is the same whether the game is paused, in command phase or execution phase. It is only affected by camera angle, and therefore clearly a pure GPU issue, right? CPU usage seems to be very low, even compared to typical first person shooters.

 

[Redwolf]

Yes, Fraps only.

Steve's explanation does not make any sense to me, because the low fps is unaffected by the state of the game. It is the same whether the game is paused, in command phase or execution phase. It is only affected by camera angle, and therefore clearly a pure GPU issue, right? CPU usage seems to be very low, even compared to typical first person shooters.

I don't think we can find out what they did without Charles making a more direct statement.

 

[NUTTERNAME]

I don't think we can find out what they did without Charles making a more direct statement.

That seems to be the case since MikeyD is claiming certain things, like armor thickness etc., are only really known by Charles.

Steve seems to be at the 'block-diagram' level of knowledge. He is not privvy to the 'circuitry diagrams'. His recent bone-headed statements regarding halftrack gunners has my head spinning. It is so Gawd-Awfully stupid as to make me wonder if he even understands the things the game is trying to model.

 

[slm]

CMBN 2.12 was released.

 

[[hirr]Leto]

I really haven't noticed anything of an improvement after throwing in the CMFI patch. That is except for that German tank commanders now have tits...

Cheers!

Leto

 

[[hirr]Leto]

Hee hee.... I should always proofread....especially when typing on my dead sexy phone.

It doesn't help that you are trying to type with almond butter on the end of your fingers... licking your dead sexy phone doesn't actually make it any more sexy, btw... nor does it make you anymore sexy... perhaps I was over reaching with the the usage of "anymore" to wrongly suggest to "inferring" readers that there may be some semblance of sexahness there to begin with... clearly, that is not the case.

Cheers!

Leto (the grate and powderful)